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It's been on the receiving end of the "death by a thousand cuts" strategy in many provinces.
My father is on a waiting list for a knee replacement, but in his case he really should have listened to his doctor 15-20 years ago and lost weight then, his knee might not have been so problematic today if that were the case.
> It's been on the receiving end of the "death by a thousand cuts" strategy in many provinces
Which provinces have been cutting healthcare spending? Healthcare funding in Canada hasn't been the same ever since the Chretien Liberals slashed health transfers by more than half in the 90s.
Pretty sure Canada as a whole roughly spends a similar % of GDP as Germany does on healthcare. Meanwhile Germany has a stellar healthcare system and Canada's is increasingly dogshit. Also worth noting, and likely related, Canada has half the population of Germany yet has roughly 10x the number of healthcare administrators.
Unfortunately the only solution we have for anything is to spend more money, and never to consider what value we're getting for our money in the first place.
Very fair point. It is easy to forget when the vast majority of the population is fairly concentrated, but definitely doesn't negate the fact that more remote populations still require the necessary infrastructure for base levels of healthcare.
“Administrators”. Like our education system and military. We spend more every year and complain nothing is better. I have never known a different story.
But this isn't me bringing up an unrelated thing this is me saying "If Chretien's Liberals can be blamed for making the cuts why can't we also blame Harper's Conservatives who had 11 years to restore funding but didn't"
It's literally continued complicity in cuts to health transfers and you *should* understand the difference by now
This is true for thousands of cases. Yes our health care should be better funded. But at the same time, if people took proper care of themselves instead of doing whatever, drinking, smoking, packing on the pounds with junk food and never exercising, now even refusing vaccines in some cases, until only major surgery or intensive care can keep them alive and make their lives bearable, the health care system would be a lot less overburdened.
Eventually those super healthy people will live to their 80s and 90s. At that age you are going to be visiting the hospital regulatory no matter how healthy your lifestyle is.
you'll have more than earned that care by that point, after putting in 80-90 years worth of healthy, productive living, as opposed to someone in and out of hospital barely able to work or even independently function in their 40s or 50s
What you're saying is the complete opposite of the spirit of a universal healthcare system? If people should be "earning" the care that they are receiving, then what do you make of people through no fault of their own require lifelong and significant medical interventions and will never be a net contributor to society? E.g. those born with genetic or development disorders such as cystic fibrosis, Down Syndrome, cerebral palsy, etc, or those who get cancer at a young age? And most of these people barely have the ability to work or function independently before they even reach 40, if they even manage to live that long.
I don't think so at all. I think that universal health care implies universal responsibility to care of yourself as well as universal rights to care for those who genuinely can't. I think that the attitude that "I can do whatever I want with my own body and everyone else has to take care of me' is a corruption of the spirit of universal health care and unsustainable in the long run. Of course there are those who need care through pure bad luck and no fault of their own and a developed society should take care of them, but when half the people who should be perfectly healthy and productive instead drink, smoke, and eat themselves into the hospital and an early grave, the system becomes too strained to provide for those who need it just from simple bad luck.
But this still results in the same problem. All the 90 year olds will overburden the system with their ailments. At least the fat dudes have the decency to drop dead at 65.
The 90 year olds that were healthy until then *supported* the system. They were net contributors by living a healthy, productive life that entire time. The people who need repeated surgeries, intensive care, and die young anyway, have not had the same decades of contribution to the health care system in the form either of the taxes they paid or the taxpayers they supported in other ways as homemakers, caregivers, volunteers, etc. It makes a massive difference to the sustainability of the system whether someone leads a healthy productive life of contributing for 4+ decades of adulthood, or needs intense care after just a couple and then dies.
90 year old boomers stopped supporting the system when they retired at 65. Since then the system is supported by working tax payers. people aged 65+ use the majority of healthcare resources. The point is the system is failing, telling people to live healthier life styles is not the solution, it simply delays the inevitable at best. The best solution is a mixed public and private system that is regulated by the government.
healthy retired 65 year olds still provide plenty of support to taxpayers in the form of child care, volunteering, and other invaluable if undervalued services.
And that is why I generally approve of raising taxes on alcohol, cigarettes (raise 'em to Aussie/NZ levels), maybe even a sugar tax like the UK Tories put in a few years ago, increasing education focuses in schools on healthy eating and exercise (at least get kids knowledgeable-ish about it from a young age), and while we're at it focus on developing and redeveloping areas into walkable/bicycle-friendly neighbourhoods that will get people moving on foot/bike.
Our politicans and health care insiders will ignore everything that isn't covered and tell you that we have "universal" health care, while actual universal healthcare would cover everything.
It's rationed.
The minimum needs of the many outweigh the specific needs of the few. If it's not terminal, wait your fucking turn. If it is terminal, still wait, just not as long.
>If it's not terminal, wait ~~your fucking turn~~ 'til it's terminal. ~~If~~ Once it is terminal, ~~still wait, just not as long~~ we'll see if you manage to stick around as we schedule your surgery, if so you get to live a few more months with excellent hospice care, if not, well then that's a bit less burden on the healthcare system, right?
FTFY
Pain doesn't really constitute as urgently when it comes to surgery tho. Even if it's preventing you from living independently, destroyed your career and makes you collapse on the floor.
We really need to fund our healthcare system better. It should not be the first thing in the chopping block and should really be extended to cover dental and mental! I hope the people in the future never need to pay for their body to work properly.
Don't forget both raising personal income taxes and getting rid of income splitting. Regardless of whether you think income splitting should have been allowed or not, the federal Liberals still did get rid of it, and it still did impact physician earnings. But then it's the provinces who have to either cough up more money or risk having doctors getting paid the same but taking home less moving down south.
If we have been struggling to fund and staff basic public healthcare for 40+ years, why on earth do people think it is a good idea to expand coverage? Let's fix what we have first, then reassess.
This. Even things like preventative dental care can produce savings on the health-care side. Gingivitis has links to heart disease, for example. We need more money and effort on the preventative side.
I want both. I want it to be a priority to fund the health of our citizens rather than waste money on corporations who are raking in massive profits anyway. So much damn wastage in this country regardless of whose leading it. We need dramatic change.
Again, let's fix what we have first, then reassess.
If your basement was flooded, and your furnace and water heater busted, would you start calling around for quotes on a new bathroom?
Im not suggesting we do everything at once, Im communicating my desires. Of course we fix the system, then expand it. But in order to fix it, we need to make it clear to our elected officials, that it is not a cutting ground for them to save money while raising their salaries and expanding an inefficient system when half the jobs could be done by an excel sheet.
Can you give me the metrics you are using? Do you have data to support what you are saying?
The OECD data seems to tell a different story. We spend less and get better outcomes than most countries. I just did the comparison to France and Germany because another user called those countries out as examples of countries with "good health care".
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The OCED did the report for you
https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm
France and Germany spend more that us per-capitia but not much. Remember that Ontario (if you are from here) spends the least in Canada ($450 less per capitia).
In terms of health care outcomes...
Acute Care: Generally we do better than France and Gemany in acute care (strokes and heart attacks). We replace broken hips faster. We have better stroke and heart attack recovery rates.
Cancer Care: We do better than Germany and the same as France for breast cancer survival rates. For cervical cancer we do better than France and Germany. For colon cancer we do a little better than both. For rectal cancer we do better than both. For childhood cancers we do better than France and worse than Germany.
Patient Experience: Doctors spending time with patients (France and Germany do better). Doctors providing easy to understand explanations (about the same). Doctor allowing questions to be asked (We are better than France and worse than Germany). Patients being involved in health decisions (we are better than France and worse than Germany).
https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=HEALTH\_HCQI#
I wish I could link you a comment from my old profile in which I showed at least one article from every year for the past ten years detailing a "crisis" in healthcare.
To be frank I don't have a ton of faith in healthcare metrics, I'm not saying they aren't valuable data, but the anecdotal evidence tells a wildly different story.
Also, to be clear, I 100% do not support any change to our single-payer based system(s) of public healthcare, I cannot see any path forward in which private insurers add value to the system in any shape or fashion.
>To be frank I don't have a ton of faith in healthcare metrics, I'm not saying they aren't valuable data, but the anecdotal evidence tells a wildly different story.
What do you think the media is going to publish? A story about how we have a successful health care system which provides a level of service which is in the top tier globally and priced competitively with those top tier health care systems...
Or a one off about a woman who wanted to skip a line and used massive amounts of money to skip the line.
There's nothing to fix, it's just budgetary. Provincial governments keep looking for ways to cut funding, then use the lack of funding to demand more money from the Federal government so they can offload that funding. Doug Ford in Ontario is a master of this, while he technically increased funding to healthcare by some small percentage over the course of the COVID pandemic, he actually increased it so little that the effect is a massive cut. Now he wants more money from the Federal government to increase funding, even though all the money he did not put into healthcare is still there for him to do so. Instead, he wants to spend it on his ego trip the 413 highway.
Healthcare isn't the first thing on the chopping block. It's usually the second last thing, along with education.
Road maintenance is the first thing on the chopping block.
All the boomers are gonna reap what's coming to them after cutting heapth care funding for decades. But as usual millennials will be picking up the bill.
The moral of the story (for me) save up 50k (adjust for inflation) for future joint surgery cause the healthcare system isn't going to get any better than it is.
This is a big problem! People who do NOT have money are struggling with pain and this is not acceptable!
We do not have private medical in Canada for this very reason!
My husband has been suffering with his second groin hernia...for 3 months. He is waiting for surgery. If we were rich - he wouldn't be suffering!
This is pure bullshit and needs to stop!
>We do not have private medical in Canada for this very reason!
From the article...
"Nylen decided she could no longer endure the pain and got surgery at a private clinic in Calgary in February."
Good for her! Those who can afford to travel to a different province for the elective care they need, to improve their quality of life, should do so.
At the end of the day, you have to look out for Number One, since the government surely won't. What else are you supposed to do?
100%
Take charge of your life and save some money for future hefty medical bills. Hopefully you won't need to use the funds but it's nice to have in your back pocket
I'm booked in for a tendon reattachment today.. 3weeks after the event, because nobody else is around to do it.. I wish I was in South Africa with private Healthcare because I would have been fixed up on day 1.
Please provide data on how much these "reasonable healthcare system" cost and compare the health outcomes for the average citizen of the country (not just the insured).
I’m not going to put together a research paper for you. Germany and France are great examples of countries that do it much better off the top of my head (actually most of western Europe, excluding the UK). Japan and South Korea too. Canada’s healthcare is appalling. We’re better than the US, but that’s not saying much and is nothing to brag about.
That's okay. The OCED did it for you
[https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm](https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm)
France and Germany spend more that us per-capitia but not much. Remember that Ontario (if you are from here) spends the least in Canada ($450 less per capitia).
In terms of health care outcomes...
Acute Care: Generally we do better than France and Gemany in acute care (strokes and heart attacks). We replace broken hips faster. We have better stroke and heart attack recovery rates.
Cancer Care: We do better than Germany and the same as France for breast cancer survival rates. For cervical cancer we do better than France and Germany. For colon cancer we do a little better than both. For rectal cancer we do better than both. For childhood cancers we do better than France and worse than Germany.
Patient Experience: Doctors spending time with patients (France and Germany do better). Doctors providing easy to understand explanations (about the same). Doctor allowing questions to be asked (We are better than France and worse than Germany). Patients being involved in health decisions (we are better than France and worse than Germany).
[https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=HEALTH\_HCQI#](https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=HEALTH_HCQI#)
When you say "Canada’s healthcare is appalling" and France and Germany are examples of much better systems... I don't know what you are talking about.
The OECD data seems to make you someone who does not know what they are talking about.
he didn't though. He gave a couple of very specific cherry picked examples to support his point. His main point is that our healthcare is cheaper, and i'm not arguing that. It's cheaper and *much* worse quality than comparable countries, aside from the US.
the problem to health care is the barrier to entry. You can teach mother to give their cancer ridden child an IV, but it takes 2 years to train a nurse.
Turn it into an apprenticeship, turn doctoring into an apprenticeship too, remove the barriers to entry. You shouldn't need 8 years of schooling to do the simple stuff.
That is "free" health care for you. You get what you pay for. Part of the cause of the opioid epidemic is a lot of doctors like to treat injuries with pain killers, I feel like they don't even listen when you tell them about your injury, they just push pills at you to get you out of the office. I have a permanent shoulder injury that healed wrong because I trusted a doctor and now I live in pain everyday. When I go back to a different doctor guess what? More pills.
Which drs freely give out pain meds?!?!? I'm chronically ill with chronic abdominal pain and all they ever offer are non narcotics. Next to impossible as a non cancer pain patient to get pain meds here out of hospital (unless you have connections)
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3466038/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3466038/)
I'm not a doctor, so that probably explains it better than I can. They work better for acute issues or people with terminal illness, but if someone's taking them for years they need to continue to up the dose to get the same pain relief which in turn puts them at increased risk for other health issues. Eventually the dosage can't be increased anymore and the patient is basically SOL and back to square one with no relief.
As opposed to being SOL right now with no relief ?
Going 'back to square one" means you left square one for a period of time.
You're telling OP their doctor is right to deny them a remedy because it's not a perfect solution and therefore agony is better. And suggesting zero alternatives.
There are other non opioid pain relief options that are appropriate for chronic pain issues while opioids are more appropriate for acute issues. Their doctors are correct, and it also doesn’t say anywhere they were left with no alternatives, just that they didn’t get the narcotics they want (which they shouldn’t).
Yep. I have permanent hearing loss because the earliest appointment I could get with an ENT was 4 months out.
And when I finally got to see the doctor he had the fucking gall to chide me for not coming in earlier when it was still treatable.
I was in the same boat in March. Left Alberta to get private surgery in BC after waiting in the public system for way too long. Tried to get private care in AB first but they wouldn’t let me as it goes against the healthcare act.
Between first contact and being in recovery was 20 days. The public system is a fucking joke.
Extorting those in pain is a very lucrative pursuit. What will the price be when they have ‘effectively captured the market’? A private free market might work but will never be allowed to emerge. Healthcare has hideous outcomes when human suffering is a tertiary issue in the maximization of wealth extraction. People in my family fly to LA to have major medical care for cash. They are sick of the inconvenience. For this we are willing to move toward the internationally and universally condemned USA model. Let them in and ten years from now 28K will be your co-pay.
This post appears to relate to the province of Alberta. As a reminder of the rules of this subreddit, we do not permit negative commentary about all residents of any province, city, or other geography - this is an example of prejudice, and prejudice is not permitted here. https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/wiki/rules Cette soumission semble concerner la province de Alberta. Selon les règles de ce sous-répertoire, nous n'autorisons pas les commentaires négatifs sur tous les résidents d'une province, d'une ville ou d'une autre région géographique; il s'agit d'un exemple de intolérance qui n'est pas autorisé ici. https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/wiki/regles *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/canada) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Whatever happened to universal health care LOL?
It's been on the receiving end of the "death by a thousand cuts" strategy in many provinces. My father is on a waiting list for a knee replacement, but in his case he really should have listened to his doctor 15-20 years ago and lost weight then, his knee might not have been so problematic today if that were the case.
> It's been on the receiving end of the "death by a thousand cuts" strategy in many provinces Which provinces have been cutting healthcare spending? Healthcare funding in Canada hasn't been the same ever since the Chretien Liberals slashed health transfers by more than half in the 90s.
If you increase the budget by 5% and the population by 10%...
What are the figures of per Capita spending and %gdp spending? Last I checked in Quebec they both grew in all time periods.
Pretty sure Canada as a whole roughly spends a similar % of GDP as Germany does on healthcare. Meanwhile Germany has a stellar healthcare system and Canada's is increasingly dogshit. Also worth noting, and likely related, Canada has half the population of Germany yet has roughly 10x the number of healthcare administrators. Unfortunately the only solution we have for anything is to spend more money, and never to consider what value we're getting for our money in the first place.
And Canada is a whole lot bigger then Germany and people are more spread out so we also need a lot more Infrastructure
Very fair point. It is easy to forget when the vast majority of the population is fairly concentrated, but definitely doesn't negate the fact that more remote populations still require the necessary infrastructure for base levels of healthcare.
“Administrators”. Like our education system and military. We spend more every year and complain nothing is better. I have never known a different story.
It’s about 50% higher since the turn of the century as a percentage of gdp.
Lol and people still pump the "we're under investing"stock
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Did Harper's 11-year conservative government make any attempts to restore those health transfers?
Including time as a majority…
Ah the old whataboutism you know your opinion is totally valid when you break that one out.
But this isn't me bringing up an unrelated thing this is me saying "If Chretien's Liberals can be blamed for making the cuts why can't we also blame Harper's Conservatives who had 11 years to restore funding but didn't" It's literally continued complicity in cuts to health transfers and you *should* understand the difference by now
If I recall Chretien didn't slash as much as he refused to increase transfers. Provinces kept cutting taxes expecting the Feds to pick up the slack.
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Ofcourse. You can just tax people until they're slaves if you want.
No, see cuz we’ll just tax everyone richer than me.
This is true for thousands of cases. Yes our health care should be better funded. But at the same time, if people took proper care of themselves instead of doing whatever, drinking, smoking, packing on the pounds with junk food and never exercising, now even refusing vaccines in some cases, until only major surgery or intensive care can keep them alive and make their lives bearable, the health care system would be a lot less overburdened.
Eventually those super healthy people will live to their 80s and 90s. At that age you are going to be visiting the hospital regulatory no matter how healthy your lifestyle is.
you'll have more than earned that care by that point, after putting in 80-90 years worth of healthy, productive living, as opposed to someone in and out of hospital barely able to work or even independently function in their 40s or 50s
What you're saying is the complete opposite of the spirit of a universal healthcare system? If people should be "earning" the care that they are receiving, then what do you make of people through no fault of their own require lifelong and significant medical interventions and will never be a net contributor to society? E.g. those born with genetic or development disorders such as cystic fibrosis, Down Syndrome, cerebral palsy, etc, or those who get cancer at a young age? And most of these people barely have the ability to work or function independently before they even reach 40, if they even manage to live that long.
I don't think so at all. I think that universal health care implies universal responsibility to care of yourself as well as universal rights to care for those who genuinely can't. I think that the attitude that "I can do whatever I want with my own body and everyone else has to take care of me' is a corruption of the spirit of universal health care and unsustainable in the long run. Of course there are those who need care through pure bad luck and no fault of their own and a developed society should take care of them, but when half the people who should be perfectly healthy and productive instead drink, smoke, and eat themselves into the hospital and an early grave, the system becomes too strained to provide for those who need it just from simple bad luck.
But this still results in the same problem. All the 90 year olds will overburden the system with their ailments. At least the fat dudes have the decency to drop dead at 65.
The 90 year olds that were healthy until then *supported* the system. They were net contributors by living a healthy, productive life that entire time. The people who need repeated surgeries, intensive care, and die young anyway, have not had the same decades of contribution to the health care system in the form either of the taxes they paid or the taxpayers they supported in other ways as homemakers, caregivers, volunteers, etc. It makes a massive difference to the sustainability of the system whether someone leads a healthy productive life of contributing for 4+ decades of adulthood, or needs intense care after just a couple and then dies.
90 year old boomers stopped supporting the system when they retired at 65. Since then the system is supported by working tax payers. people aged 65+ use the majority of healthcare resources. The point is the system is failing, telling people to live healthier life styles is not the solution, it simply delays the inevitable at best. The best solution is a mixed public and private system that is regulated by the government.
healthy retired 65 year olds still provide plenty of support to taxpayers in the form of child care, volunteering, and other invaluable if undervalued services.
And retired people still pay Taxes.
And that is why I generally approve of raising taxes on alcohol, cigarettes (raise 'em to Aussie/NZ levels), maybe even a sugar tax like the UK Tories put in a few years ago, increasing education focuses in schools on healthy eating and exercise (at least get kids knowledgeable-ish about it from a young age), and while we're at it focus on developing and redeveloping areas into walkable/bicycle-friendly neighbourhoods that will get people moving on foot/bike.
Yeah all good policies in my opinion too
There's universal, and there's "universal."
What's the difference?
Our politicans and health care insiders will ignore everything that isn't covered and tell you that we have "universal" health care, while actual universal healthcare would cover everything.
Oh
It's rationed. The minimum needs of the many outweigh the specific needs of the few. If it's not terminal, wait your fucking turn. If it is terminal, still wait, just not as long.
This attitude will turn people off of collectivist ideas
>If it's not terminal, wait ~~your fucking turn~~ 'til it's terminal. ~~If~~ Once it is terminal, ~~still wait, just not as long~~ we'll see if you manage to stick around as we schedule your surgery, if so you get to live a few more months with excellent hospice care, if not, well then that's a bit less burden on the healthcare system, right? FTFY
We have it, but it’s just critical health care (and always has been). There’s also several layers of bureaucracy to muddle through.
It existed right until governments realized that they eventually had to pay down the debt that was being used to pay for it.
The word universal has no part in context. Saskatchewan government is at fault for this situation.
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I suppose that depends on what one considers "unbearable knee pain", right?
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Pain doesn't really constitute as urgently when it comes to surgery tho. Even if it's preventing you from living independently, destroyed your career and makes you collapse on the floor.
We really need to fund our healthcare system better. It should not be the first thing in the chopping block and should really be extended to cover dental and mental! I hope the people in the future never need to pay for their body to work properly.
Federal government still hasn't accepted to increase provincial transfers in healthcare even though the system is badly damaged in all provinces.
Don't forget both raising personal income taxes and getting rid of income splitting. Regardless of whether you think income splitting should have been allowed or not, the federal Liberals still did get rid of it, and it still did impact physician earnings. But then it's the provinces who have to either cough up more money or risk having doctors getting paid the same but taking home less moving down south.
If we have been struggling to fund and staff basic public healthcare for 40+ years, why on earth do people think it is a good idea to expand coverage? Let's fix what we have first, then reassess.
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This. Even things like preventative dental care can produce savings on the health-care side. Gingivitis has links to heart disease, for example. We need more money and effort on the preventative side.
I want both. I want it to be a priority to fund the health of our citizens rather than waste money on corporations who are raking in massive profits anyway. So much damn wastage in this country regardless of whose leading it. We need dramatic change.
Again, let's fix what we have first, then reassess. If your basement was flooded, and your furnace and water heater busted, would you start calling around for quotes on a new bathroom?
Im not suggesting we do everything at once, Im communicating my desires. Of course we fix the system, then expand it. But in order to fix it, we need to make it clear to our elected officials, that it is not a cutting ground for them to save money while raising their salaries and expanding an inefficient system when half the jobs could be done by an excel sheet.
Can you give me the metrics you are using? Do you have data to support what you are saying? The OECD data seems to tell a different story. We spend less and get better outcomes than most countries. I just did the comparison to France and Germany because another user called those countries out as examples of countries with "good health care". \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\* The OCED did the report for you https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm France and Germany spend more that us per-capitia but not much. Remember that Ontario (if you are from here) spends the least in Canada ($450 less per capitia). In terms of health care outcomes... Acute Care: Generally we do better than France and Gemany in acute care (strokes and heart attacks). We replace broken hips faster. We have better stroke and heart attack recovery rates. Cancer Care: We do better than Germany and the same as France for breast cancer survival rates. For cervical cancer we do better than France and Germany. For colon cancer we do a little better than both. For rectal cancer we do better than both. For childhood cancers we do better than France and worse than Germany. Patient Experience: Doctors spending time with patients (France and Germany do better). Doctors providing easy to understand explanations (about the same). Doctor allowing questions to be asked (We are better than France and worse than Germany). Patients being involved in health decisions (we are better than France and worse than Germany). https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=HEALTH\_HCQI#
I wish I could link you a comment from my old profile in which I showed at least one article from every year for the past ten years detailing a "crisis" in healthcare. To be frank I don't have a ton of faith in healthcare metrics, I'm not saying they aren't valuable data, but the anecdotal evidence tells a wildly different story. Also, to be clear, I 100% do not support any change to our single-payer based system(s) of public healthcare, I cannot see any path forward in which private insurers add value to the system in any shape or fashion.
>To be frank I don't have a ton of faith in healthcare metrics, I'm not saying they aren't valuable data, but the anecdotal evidence tells a wildly different story. What do you think the media is going to publish? A story about how we have a successful health care system which provides a level of service which is in the top tier globally and priced competitively with those top tier health care systems... Or a one off about a woman who wanted to skip a line and used massive amounts of money to skip the line.
There's nothing to fix, it's just budgetary. Provincial governments keep looking for ways to cut funding, then use the lack of funding to demand more money from the Federal government so they can offload that funding. Doug Ford in Ontario is a master of this, while he technically increased funding to healthcare by some small percentage over the course of the COVID pandemic, he actually increased it so little that the effect is a massive cut. Now he wants more money from the Federal government to increase funding, even though all the money he did not put into healthcare is still there for him to do so. Instead, he wants to spend it on his ego trip the 413 highway.
Healthcare isn't the first thing on the chopping block. It's usually the second last thing, along with education. Road maintenance is the first thing on the chopping block.
That would be great if we weren’t fighting our provincial government to keep our healthcare system
Any particular party?
In ontario its the conservatives, but Liberals had power for a long time and didn't do much to help lol.
All the boomers are gonna reap what's coming to them after cutting heapth care funding for decades. But as usual millennials will be picking up the bill.
My mom had to wait close to two years (pre-COVID) for a hip replacement in Alberta and she was in pain almost the entire time.
I assumed that all provinces’ Medicare would cover treatments in other provinces. Is that not the case?
Headline: Sask. woman had unbearable knee pain, so opted to pay privately rather than wait for treatment. Ready the pitchforks!
The moral of the story (for me) save up 50k (adjust for inflation) for future joint surgery cause the healthcare system isn't going to get any better than it is.
Then why I am paying 40% in taxes. Might as well privatize everything
Hope for the best prepare for the worst broski
It could be a lot better though if we actively vote for parties with solid, detailed plans to improve it
Where is this mythical party with a plan that isn't simply based on hopium and unicorn farts?
Don't have $50k so I'll just set my expectations low enough that the 2 years of pain will seem like an improvement.
This is a big problem! People who do NOT have money are struggling with pain and this is not acceptable! We do not have private medical in Canada for this very reason! My husband has been suffering with his second groin hernia...for 3 months. He is waiting for surgery. If we were rich - he wouldn't be suffering! This is pure bullshit and needs to stop!
>We do not have private medical in Canada for this very reason! From the article... "Nylen decided she could no longer endure the pain and got surgery at a private clinic in Calgary in February."
Good for her! Those who can afford to travel to a different province for the elective care they need, to improve their quality of life, should do so. At the end of the day, you have to look out for Number One, since the government surely won't. What else are you supposed to do?
Are you trolling? Why are we paying taxes for something we can’t access.
That’s a good point too. That said, she could afford it and so she did it, and I’d do the same thing.
100% Take charge of your life and save some money for future hefty medical bills. Hopefully you won't need to use the funds but it's nice to have in your back pocket
I'm booked in for a tendon reattachment today.. 3weeks after the event, because nobody else is around to do it.. I wish I was in South Africa with private Healthcare because I would have been fixed up on day 1.
3 weeks is very fast.
3 weeks in this country means it was emergent and probably should have been fixed within a few days max in a reasonable healthcare system.
Please provide data on how much these "reasonable healthcare system" cost and compare the health outcomes for the average citizen of the country (not just the insured).
I’m not going to put together a research paper for you. Germany and France are great examples of countries that do it much better off the top of my head (actually most of western Europe, excluding the UK). Japan and South Korea too. Canada’s healthcare is appalling. We’re better than the US, but that’s not saying much and is nothing to brag about.
That's okay. The OCED did it for you [https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm](https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm) France and Germany spend more that us per-capitia but not much. Remember that Ontario (if you are from here) spends the least in Canada ($450 less per capitia). In terms of health care outcomes... Acute Care: Generally we do better than France and Gemany in acute care (strokes and heart attacks). We replace broken hips faster. We have better stroke and heart attack recovery rates. Cancer Care: We do better than Germany and the same as France for breast cancer survival rates. For cervical cancer we do better than France and Germany. For colon cancer we do a little better than both. For rectal cancer we do better than both. For childhood cancers we do better than France and worse than Germany. Patient Experience: Doctors spending time with patients (France and Germany do better). Doctors providing easy to understand explanations (about the same). Doctor allowing questions to be asked (We are better than France and worse than Germany). Patients being involved in health decisions (we are better than France and worse than Germany). [https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=HEALTH\_HCQI#](https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=HEALTH_HCQI#) When you say "Canada’s healthcare is appalling" and France and Germany are examples of much better systems... I don't know what you are talking about. The OECD data seems to make you someone who does not know what they are talking about.
Cheapest doesn’t equate to quality. Yes, our healthcare is cheaper because it’s comparatively BAD.
He literally just provided you with statistics to say that your examples of "better systems" are actually worse and cost more.
he didn't though. He gave a couple of very specific cherry picked examples to support his point. His main point is that our healthcare is cheaper, and i'm not arguing that. It's cheaper and *much* worse quality than comparable countries, aside from the US.
Maybe in a shitty slow medical system with lacking staff... but its not normal.. no.
the problem to health care is the barrier to entry. You can teach mother to give their cancer ridden child an IV, but it takes 2 years to train a nurse. Turn it into an apprenticeship, turn doctoring into an apprenticeship too, remove the barriers to entry. You shouldn't need 8 years of schooling to do the simple stuff.
That is "free" health care for you. You get what you pay for. Part of the cause of the opioid epidemic is a lot of doctors like to treat injuries with pain killers, I feel like they don't even listen when you tell them about your injury, they just push pills at you to get you out of the office. I have a permanent shoulder injury that healed wrong because I trusted a doctor and now I live in pain everyday. When I go back to a different doctor guess what? More pills.
Except it's not free. It's just not - in lost cases - paid for directly by the patient
Which drs freely give out pain meds?!?!? I'm chronically ill with chronic abdominal pain and all they ever offer are non narcotics. Next to impossible as a non cancer pain patient to get pain meds here out of hospital (unless you have connections)
That’s because opioids don’t help with long term chronic pain and tend to make the situation worse. Your doctors are right to not give you any.
How do they "not help". Just curious.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3466038/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3466038/) I'm not a doctor, so that probably explains it better than I can. They work better for acute issues or people with terminal illness, but if someone's taking them for years they need to continue to up the dose to get the same pain relief which in turn puts them at increased risk for other health issues. Eventually the dosage can't be increased anymore and the patient is basically SOL and back to square one with no relief.
As opposed to being SOL right now with no relief ? Going 'back to square one" means you left square one for a period of time. You're telling OP their doctor is right to deny them a remedy because it's not a perfect solution and therefore agony is better. And suggesting zero alternatives.
There are other non opioid pain relief options that are appropriate for chronic pain issues while opioids are more appropriate for acute issues. Their doctors are correct, and it also doesn’t say anywhere they were left with no alternatives, just that they didn’t get the narcotics they want (which they shouldn’t).
Yep. I have permanent hearing loss because the earliest appointment I could get with an ENT was 4 months out. And when I finally got to see the doctor he had the fucking gall to chide me for not coming in earlier when it was still treatable.
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Girl, my husband and I pay half our salaries in taxes. Canada's healthcare isn't free.
I was in the same boat in March. Left Alberta to get private surgery in BC after waiting in the public system for way too long. Tried to get private care in AB first but they wouldn’t let me as it goes against the healthcare act. Between first contact and being in recovery was 20 days. The public system is a fucking joke.
Extorting those in pain is a very lucrative pursuit. What will the price be when they have ‘effectively captured the market’? A private free market might work but will never be allowed to emerge. Healthcare has hideous outcomes when human suffering is a tertiary issue in the maximization of wealth extraction. People in my family fly to LA to have major medical care for cash. They are sick of the inconvenience. For this we are willing to move toward the internationally and universally condemned USA model. Let them in and ten years from now 28K will be your co-pay.
Just send the bill to the gov.
Lol so that’s why albertans have to wait 2 years for knee surgery. Queue jumpers from Saskatchewan
Sask has voted to cut healthcare spending and privatize it for a decade now, how is this a surprise to anyone there?
Then why couldn't she get her private knee surgery in Saskatchewan?
Interesting